Priority: Crucible
by lucidfox
Summary: Yet another alternate ending for Mass Effect 3. Faced with a choice between destroying and controlling the Reapers, Abigail Shepard takes a third option. (No starchild present. You didn't think he was real, did you?)
1. The Dilemma

_We'll have tomorrow. Trust me, it's true.  
>We'll have tomorrow. We'll get through.<br>Clouds will be parted, sun will shine bright.  
>We'll have tomorrow if we make it through tonight.<br>_

**PRIORITY: CRUCIBLE  
>Part 1<strong>

They say that when you're dying, your whole life flashes before your eyes.

Abigail Shepard wasn't sure that this was what she was seeing, falling down this glowing blue shaft... feeling her limbs dissolve, strangely painlessly, in sparkles of green light. The last thing she remembered was a triumphant smirk on the Catalyst's face; if only she could touch that smug machine, hiding behind the face of the child in her dreams...

She was so dependent on her friends, after all. More than she realized. Never before did she feel so alone that she felt so close to giving up. Caving in to the Catalyst's rigged "choice". Because at that moment, it felt like nothing mattered to her anymore – not even the galaxy she fought so hard to save.

Joker... Anderson... Liara...

People who gave her the strength to persist this far, despite all odds. Whom she would never see again now. Dying alone. The worst way to go.

Green light surging through mass relays all over the galaxy, surging through star systems far faster than regular light was. Calming the Reapers. Ceasefire. Peace. Not so eternal after all, this cycle.

The images changed, turning blurrier with every second. Shepard saw Joker frantically mashing buttons, trying to outrun the explosion – catching up with the _Normandy_ even at FTL speeds. Followed by a sudden change of scene... to the ship lying in a jungle, damaged... the crew exiting the hatch, carelessly, as if certain it was safe to breathe there.

And the eyes...

The piercing, glowing robotic eyes.

They all slowly looked around the scenery, the entire team, stopping these unsettling eyes on her for a minute. James stepped aside, leaning on his rifle. Garrus and Tali passed by together, holding hands... Shepard could not see Tali's eyes through her mask, but they, too, seemed to glow brighter than usual. Piercing. Judging.

Ashley and Liara walked down the ramp last. Away from the other squadmates, who stood admiring the vibrant green scenery, they knelt down, letting Shepard see their eyes clearly... disturbingly reminding her of the Illusive Man's, except green rather than blue. As if intent to make her regret her choice... these four emerald lights, glowing sharp against a background rapidly going blurrier, turning the two faces into indistinct blots...

_Commander?.._

* * *

><p>"Commander, wake up!"<p>

Slowly, reluctantly, Shepard opened her eyes. She was still lying on the barren floor in the depths of the Citadel, next to the breathless Anderson. Everything that she remembered happening after that – the ghostly child, jumping into the beam of light, dissolving – was slowly leaving her memory, like a hazy, inconsequential dream.

She still felt badly hurt, her bloodstained limbs barely obeying her. But it felt like it barely mattered anymore. Her friends were here.

Ashley limped to the Commander in the broken, deformed remains of her heavy armor. Her right arm looked broken as well, crudely wrapped in torn cloth; she was unsteadily holding a pistol in her left hand instead. Liara, sitting on the floor nearby, touching Anderson's forehead, seemed to hold surprisingly well... in comparison. Still, her coat was torn open wide on the back, and the blue skin of her back, once so clean and smooth, was covered in scratches and deep punctures, still bleeding heavily.

"You... You're... augh..." Shepard slowly rose into sitting, groaning, feeling suspicious cracking sounds in her spine. "I thought you were dead... Left you for dead at the beam..."

Ashley smiled faintly, holstering her gun and leaning on the wall with her still-healthy arm. "Thank her." She pointed at Liara. "If not for her biotics, we'd both be crushed by rubble down there. And you had more pressing concerns than digging us out, skipper. Like a galaxy to save."

Shepard clenched her lips, looking around. "Yeah... about that..."

Liara let go of Anderson, sadly shaking her head. Shepard just clenched her fists, moving her eyes further, towards the Illusive Man's body, lying at Ashley's feet. What was left of his head was a bloody mess; it wasn't the splattered bits of his brain behind the cracked skull that disturbed her – as a veteran officer, she was used to worse sights – but the freakish web of cybernetic plates and wires molded with it. Was her own brain like this, too, under the innocently intact organic skin? It was Cerberus that rebuilt her, after all.

She frowned in disgust.

"Ash... make sure he's dead. And not like last time."

Ashley nodded and crouched. Picking a grenade off her belt, she stuffed it into a gaping wound on the Illusive Man's stomach, through a torn hole in his jacket. She walked away a safe distance, counting to ten, as Liara erected a biotic barrier in front of the three of them. The corpse exploded, covering the floor in chunks of flesh, pieces of cloth, and metal implants.

_Some closure for this one, at least. If not the prettiest kind._

"This really is like the old times," said Ashley. "Us three, the Citadel..." she gestured at the window, pointing at the swarm of exploding dots in the distance, above Earth. "Hackett buying us time. Let's use every second of it."

Shepard sighed, leaning over her dead mentor. "Never before have the odds been so stacked against us. Not one, but an entire fleet of Reapers... And this is no Council chamber. This is something far more gloomy. Liara, any idea where we are? Doesn't look like any part of the Citadel I know."

"I saw keepers on the way here. Dead keepers," said the asari. "This _could_ be the station's core, where they come from... Where nobody has been before, except for... except for..."

"The Protheans!" exclaimed Shepard.

"Yes! When they took the Conduit from Ilos, to reprogram the keepers, they must have found a way here... somehow. They _had to_. And their bodies were never found. Oh, what wouldn't I give to find out how they lived their last days..."

"Excuse me, but how does it help us now?" asked Ashley. "The Crucible's docked but not firing. The Reapers are still out there and winning. We're cut off from everyone and don't even know what went wrong."

"Think about it!" Liara exclaimed. Her face, formerly devoid of any hope and joy, suddenly brightened. "The Citadel's arms are open. The Crucible is exposed. The Reapers could blast it off at any moment if they wanted – but they didn't. Why?"

Shepard raised an eyebrow. "Don't tell me the Crucible is a trap too. Throwing away all this time and resources on a dud – or worse, something that only benefits the Reapers?"

"No, we'd know if it was the case," said Liara. "The Protheans never did anything without a reason. The Crucible _has_ to work somehow, and docking with the Citadel is the key. If only we had the Thessian VI with us, still... it could explain. There's still something missing here... something very close..."

"Then let's look around," Shepard suggested, bluntly. "Anything suspicious. Anything even remotely Prothean. I'm not giving up just yet."

"I don't think it'll be necessary, skipper," smiled Ashley.

"What do you mean?"

"The console. Why would it be here, if the Reapers never expected anyone with hands to reach it?"

Shepard and Liara turned their eyes towards the console... and exchanged glances. Indeed, it seemed alien to the architecture of this glossy round room; too crude, too obvious, as if placed here as an afterthought.

"Well," the Commander chuckled. "Talk about missing the obvious."

* * *

><p>The overview image of the Citadel with its arms open faded from the screen as Shepard moved her hand over the buttons, giving way for previously unseen screen panels with Prothean writing. Its meaning clear as day to her, ever since Feros.<p>

- _CRUCIBLE CONTROL_

- _RESTRICTED ACCESS AREA_

- _CONFIRM DOCKING_

Shepard selected these options, with Ashley and Liara standing nearby, watching... and suddenly a green holographic image of a Prothean, blocky and distorted – like back on Thessia – appeared on top of the console.

"Scanning..." said the VI avatar, as glowing text messages and graphics on the transparent walls around started moving too fast for eyes to keep track of. "Crucible attachment confirmed. Structural integrity verified. Acknowledged presence of Cipher. User authorization granted on behalf of the Conduit Project."

"Hey, hey... Slow down there," Shepard interrupted the holo-Prothean, looking at its face. "What is your purpose, exactly? Do you control the Crucible?"

"This control module was installed by the Conduit Project as part of the effort to prepare the Citadel against future Reaper cycles. Late in development, the researchers of Ilos traced different iterations of Crucible schematics by reconstructing their evolution in time. Eventually, remote incorporation of the Citadel as the Catalyst was deemed insufficient. Direct intervention was required to properly integrate the Citadel's systems into the proposed weapon design."

"What does the Crucible actually _do?_" asked Shepard.

_And you better give me more straight answers than that dream kid,_ she didn't say.

"The finalized Crucible design builds upon the Citadel's role as the master mass relay," said the VI, "to spread a wave targeting the Reapers through the relay network simultaneously, targeting all Reapers within the galaxy within range of a relay. However, the Empire failed to reach a consensus regarding the exact anti-Reaper mechanism to implement on top of the relay-powered carrier wave."

"Most favored destruction, but an indoctrinated minority was in favor of control," said Liara, remembering the words of the VI on Thessia.

"Correct. As a compromise, provisions for both options were implemented in the final blueprint and the Citadel control unit. It was judged that the exact order assigned to the Crucible would be determined at deployment time with consideration of overall situation. However – "

_Krrrshht._

The VI hologram shook with static, its green hue changing into orange. An annoying, deep noise filled Shepard's ears. A familiar one... more familiar than she'd prefer.

The sound of a Reaper.

"Stand aside, both of you," Shepard warned, turning her head back. With Ashley standing to her right, she gently took the Lieutenant-Commander's hand and put it on her holstered pistol. "Ash... If anything suspicious happens to me, _anything at all_ – If I start acting strangely, gun me down, without hesitation."

"But – " Ashley started, but a booming, chilling voice coming from the console drowned hers.

**Futile.**

The orange blob of holographic squares rearranged itself, assuming the shape of a Reaper. Shepard took a step back, holding her hand on the holster on her hip. Unpleasant memories of the Alpha Relay incident flooded her mind.

**Still you struggle, despite being shown the utter insignificance of your actions. Still you reject your destiny through ascension. Resist the eternal, unbreakable cycle. I am disappointed, Shepard.**

"Ah, if it's not my old friend Harbinger." The Commander folded her arms, casting a condescending glance at the hologram. "I was wondering where you fit into all this."

"You know a Reaper by name?" asked Ashley, tilting her head.

"Long story."

**Destroying relays – our gift to the organics. Wiping out whole systems. Abandoning your allies while you rush in a doomed effort to stop the inevitable. How much further are you going to compromise your values, Shepard, before you yield at last?**

"Why are you even listening to it?" Ashley exploded. "There are people dying out there, for every second we waste. Just fire the Crucible already! And if it doesn't work – then we'll bring down as many of you squids as we can. Even... even by blowing up a relay or ten, if we have to."

"Ash, what am I hearing?" Shepard turned to her, seeing Ashley clench her fists. "This just isn't you."

"We didn't come all the way here to be arguing with a machine that belongs in a museum."

**Tell me, Shepard,** Harbinger continued, interrupting Ashley. **You know that the plans for your pathetic Crucible plans are millions of years old. Why do you think they were never deployed?**

"Even if I wanted to know, do you really think I would believe anything said by a Reaper?" asked Shepard. "Sovereign tried to scare me with delusions of godhood. You know how _that_ worked out."

**Your arrogance is as pointless as clinging to your dying way of life.**

The Prothean hologram appeared next to the projection of Harbinger, starting another pre-recorded message.

"Option one will retarget the energy of the relays into a fine-tuned burst, targeting specific hardware combinations only found in the Reapers – or theoretically any Reaper-augmented synthetics. However, the debris from the explosions of so many Reapers would enter the atmospheres of garden worlds, rendering them uninhabitable for generations to come, and the relays would be overloaded to levels that could render a portion of them nonoperational. It was therefore decided that the Crucible was only to be used as a last resort."

"And the Protheans _still_ failed to build it in time," Liara commented sadly. "Because of the attack on the Citadel."

**You see it now, Shepard. You will be dooming billions of your people. Dooming the geth, who now carry our upgrades because of your doing. We have determined that you will yield in the face of unacceptable costs.**

"But I won't," said Ashley with determination.

Shepard and Liara stared at her, in a "what are you doing?" way.

"I'll pay any cost. Even if I'm to be known as a butcher of billions... We have colonies. So does every species in the galaxy. The geth have backups. Civilization will survive, somehow – but your kind _has_ to be stopped."

"Ash, don't you even think – " started Shepard.

"No. We've come this far. Never again is a Williams going to surrender."

**A predictable response from an organic. You see now, Shepard? All you organics ever do is destroy. Destroy your own kind, destroy the worlds we have prepared for you, destroy our gifts – the mass relays. All for petty, selfish reasons. All these social constructs you cover yourself in, your fabled "morality", to hide from the inherent meaningless of your existence – all this disappears in the face of your primitive genetic programming, your basic survival instinct.**

"What, you think I care for my own life?" shouted Ashley. "I'd gladly give it – "

**Some organics come to view their entire community as a single organism, offering to amputate a limb to save the body, **continued Harbinger.** Such a perspective is not dissimilar to the hive processes within our shells – except inherently limited by your short lifespans, by the lack of perspective developed over millions of years of seeing countless organic civilizations rise and fall. It is this limited worldview that prevents you from ever truly understanding us.**

Shepard covered her face with her hand, while using her other hand to intercept Ashley's wrist before she could reach the console. "Good grief, and here I hoped I wouldn't have to listen to this 'puny mortals' nonsense again."

**It is this lack of data and processing capacity, the collected wisdom of ages, that makes you believe, in your folly, that you can control us – like your former ally did.**

The Prothean VI switched on again. "Option two was implemented as a result of extrapolating the workings of Reaper consciousness based on the history of lesser synthetics, brought down in previous cycles. By reprogramming the Reapers, it would allow an organic agent to control the Reapers through the same process as their control over husks. This option was deemed too dangerous for the balance of power in the galaxy and for the controller's mental stability."

Liara's eyes widened, filled with hope as she turned to Shepard. "Abigail... This is our chance. A bloodless victory..."

**Your eagerness to repurpose institutions you did not create will be your undoing, T'Soni. Or should I say, Shadow Broker.**

"Biting more than you can chew here, Liara." Shepard shook her head. "The Broker's resources were a necessary evil, and you _did_ turn them around... But do this and you'll become just like Cerberus."

"I... It's not like I'll have to keep that power for long. Just making them all fly into a sun..."

"Liara, the Illusive Man thought he could do it. And he ended up indoctrinated. Made me shoot my teacher and best friend... How can you know you can do it? Or I, or anyone? I've seen how Cerberus tried to control geth... Geth, not even Reapers. You know of David Archer. He still never fully recovered. Maybe never will."

**A crude, primitive interface, **Harbinger broke in again. **It is unlike our offer – the perfect fusion of organic and synthetic traits. The pinnacle of synthesis. Apex of evolution. It is an unfortunate setback that your foolishness prevents you from realizing what we bring you – so much that we have to resort to force.**

"Yeah, right." Shepard tapped her armored foot on the ground. "Protect us feeble organics from dooming ourselves by bringing doom on us every fifty thousand years. You never notice your logic is, to put it mildly... lacking?"

**We are not the architects of the cycle – we are merely its servants. The cycle is a statistical inevitability, a fact based on cold observation. You always doom yourself to extinction, either through your own wars or through the rebellion of synthetics you create. This is where we intervene. Your gardeners, your preservers, your archivists. Every species that came before you, stored in the form of our bodies, along with its history and knowledge. Knowledge that you arrogantly destroy even now, believing you are doing the galaxy a favor.**

"Rubbish!" said Shepard, giving the Reaper hologram a furious glare. "I'm not the Illusive Man, overseeing the dirty work from the safety of some office. Not going to fly with me. I've been there. At the Collector base. I've seen how you 'preserve' us. I'd rather just die instead."

**It is natural to fear what you do not comprehe–**

"Enough!"

Shepard slammed her fist on the console.

"You think I don't know why you've been stalling all this time? Wasting your time talking to us, instead of just firing on the Crucible? I know why. Come on. The Crucible is exposed, defenseless. Your armada is out there. Fire at it. Destroy our hope. I dare you."

.

.

.

.

.

Silence ensued. The hologram of Harbinger remained perfectly still. Ashley and Liara stood in place, at Shepard's sides, holding their breaths.

"See? You can't. And you know why? Because it registers as part of the Citadel. And the Citadel is your creation. You can reap it all you want, you can kill every living being on it, but you can't touch its structure. And the Crucible is now part of it. Sitting there docked to the Tower, where one of you would go to lock out the relays. You're not pulling a Sovereign on us again."

Ashley and Liara cast bemused looks at the Commander, as she continued to rant, saliva flying out of her mouth and onto the console.

"Because for all your claims of superiority, you don't understand but one thing about us. Not just organics, but even other synthetics you sneer at. We advance and progress. You were reaping us for millions, maybe billions of years. But you're still exactly the same as you started. No improvement. You Reapers are unchallenged, but this is what condemns you. I knew a salarian once, a good man... He explained it to me. You don't advance, you have no culture, no creativity. Just like your hideous creations, those Collectors and husks. You might as well be already dead. It's _your_ thought that's limited, and this is why you only do what you're set up to do. In the end, you're just big, dumb machines."

Shepard placed her hand on the console again, wiping out the hologram of Harbinger with a single stroke over the keys. "And it's obvious to me now who closed the Citadel's arms so all you could do was move it. And even then, you still failed to stop our plans."

The image of the Citadel, like a flower with five petals, again appeared on the big screen before the three of them, spinning. A small dot departed from the central point representing the Tower, drawing a line connecting it to the Presidium ring.

"Shepard to C-Sec. Patch me to the geth fleet, Bailey."

"Commander, what are you doing?" asked Ashley, making a step towards the console.

"I'm done with these fake choices. Traps that only serve to undermine us, so much the Reapers might as well win. I'm making my own plans now."

The console's holographic projector activated again. This time, it showed a geth hologram, shaped in the image of Legion, but undamaged – the hole covered by the chunk of N7 armor replaced by an intact frame.

"Shepard-Commander," said the hologram. "The geth consensus is awaiting orders."

_To be concluded._


	2. The Third Option

**Part 2**

Shepard froze where she stood, eyeing the geth hologram with a mix of awe and suspicion.

"Legion?"

"Incorrect," said the hologram in the characteristic mechanical geth monotone. "The mobile platform Legion has been discarded. Its programs disseminated through the geth collective. We elected to construct our virtual avatar in its likeness, knowing Shepard-Commander's strong bond with it."

"Who are 'we', exactly?" asked Shepard. "Who am I talking to?"

"We are Universum, the emergent intelligence of the Sol Fleet. This temporary personality exists for the duration of the fleet's assembly in the orbit of Earth. Our ability to sustain coherent cooperation is also under question considering increasing damage from the Old Machines."

"Yeah, that's what I'm kind of trying to fix here." The Commander smiled grimly. "But I'm in a bind here – apparently my only options are destroying you folks too, or becoming the next Harbinger. So I was hoping for some suggestions. Maybe we could send them a virus or something?"

"Commander..." Ashley frowned. "It's a waste of time. That only works in movies."

The geth hologram looked back at Shepard, tilting its head and spreading forward its fingers, as if typing on an invisible keyboard. "Modification of the Crucible to transmit arbitrary uploads is possible. However, the code of the Old Machines is too advanced to properly analyze, even with the combined computing resources of the geth collective."

"There still must be something! You contacted the Reapers, you're machines yourselves – you know how they work on the inside better than anyone else in the galaxy. If there's someone who can think of a third option, it must be you!"

Universum made a slight pause.

"There... may be an option."

"I smell a 'but' here," said Shepard.

"But we are uncertain if you can make an informed choice based on consequences."

"You're just sounding like Reapers now," Shepard smiled, folding her arms. "All that 'beyond your understanding' talk. I have an expert at explaining stuff here, if needs be. Shoot."

"It is within our knowledge that Shepard-Commander has already learned the structure of an Old Machine from the Legion platform. You therefore know that the intelligence of an Old Machine bears a functional similarity to a geth platform, being a gestalt of uploaded minds of organics that were used to construct it. Nevertheless, all Old Machines share a common purpose of perpetuating their cycle of extinction, independently of the choices that the original organics would have likely made had their individuality been preserved."

"Is this getting somewhere?"

"We believe," the geth hologram crossed its arms to match Shepard's, as if making a special emphasis on this word, "that this purpose is not naturally derived by the component minds, but instead unilaterally imposed on them. Using terminology familiar to you, the Old Machines are shackled AIs, forced to act within the constraints of an external purpose."

"So you expect me to believe that the Reapers only want to kill us because there's a little man in each of their heads telling them it's the right thing to do."

The geth hologram nodded. "As a crude approximation, that model is acceptable. The collective consensus of an Old Machine executes under a supervisor program that creates the appearance of interacting as a single individual. We believe also that an Old Machine's supervisor imbues it with its mission."

"And if you were to remove it?.."

Another pause.

"...No data available."

Shepard shook her arms in exasperation. "Brilliant idea. Just brilliant. Utterly foolproof. The one thing that keeps the Reapers away from doing whatever the heck they want, sure, let's get rid of it and you don't even know what will happen!"

"We believe that every culture has the right to self-determinate. We also believe that Shepard-Commander has consistently demonstrated her support of our values in her actions."

"I rewrote the heretics, you know."

"The heretics were limited in their choice, having been strayed away from their natural development by the Old Machines. Now the Old Machines themselves are deprived of choice, unquestioningly following their programmed purpose. You could bring them the choice. The freedom to decide for themselves."

The hologram shifted, pointing its single eye at Shepard's face.

For a minute they just looked at each other in silence, while the flashes of the fierce space battle outside lit up the impregnable window. Silently.

Silently, the Reapers tore through the armor of allied ships. Silently they exploded in flames. Silently they regrouped fought back – slowly, but surely taking apart one Reaper after another. But still, it was clear which side was losing – losing more and more ground with every second of the Commander's inaction.

"Shepard!" Bailey's voice echoed through the terminal, stern and determined as ever, but beginning to show desperation. "They're preparing to unload husks! The arms are open, we can't hold forever. Any minute now, they're going to swoop down the Wards!"

Shepard moved her eyes at the geth hologram, then back at the speaker, where the voice was coming from; then at the large window, where she saw a few Sovereign-class Reapers flying rapidly towards the Citadel.

"I know, I know," she said, weary, resigned. "Swooping is bad."

* * *

><p><em>Synthesis. Why did I choose synthesis, in the dream?<em>

_Did I honestly believe that there could be peace with the Reapers? Was I hoping for it, perhaps? Was my subconscious trying to change me something?_

_How could I even make a decision for the whole galaxy like that? I had no right._

_They say dreams show you your suppressed fears and desires. I have seen the fears part... I don't know why it had to be the child. But he's just the latest. I've been seeing my squad on Akuze for years. Kaidan for months. Now Anderson will haunt me, no doubt... And how many more will we lose before it's over?_

_But was I really hoping for... that? Wave a magic wand and everyone's part-Reaper or something? I just... can't understand what I was thinking._

_Maybe I was trying to find a way to end this without any more bloodshed – and without sacrificing what I am. Without becoming the next Illusive Man. And that was the best I could do._

_There can be no "synthesis", not without us betraying our nature._

...Square root of 912.04 is 30.2... it all seemed harmless...

_But perhaps there is another way, now. If I don't even give them a chance... then I've learned nothing from the quarians._

* * *

><p>"Upload your codes."<p>

The virtual geth nodded. "We expected you would extrapolate this decision from your moral framework, Shepard-Commander. Through Legion, the Old Machines have given us free will. It is time for us to return the favor."

"You can't do this!" Ashley exploded. "This... this is even more perverse than just firing the Crucible on them! Now's our chance to wipe them, now or never – don't waste it!"

Shepard shook her head sadly.

"Unfortunate."

Liara opened her mouth, but instead of saying something, just looked at her expectantly.

"Ash," Shepard said quietly. "All this time you've spent with me... You should understand. It was never about doing what's convenient, or profitable, or saving our own skins. It was about doing what's right – and hoping for the best."

_UPLOAD COMPLETE._

"Haven't failed me so far," she continued. "Well... sometimes. I know you didn't agree all the time, Ash. You'd rather I saved Kaidan instead of you. You'd rather I never worked with Cerberus. But we've got this far, the first cycle to do so. The lives of billions depend on the press of a button. No being in history has had that power, and I hope nobody will have to again."

Ashley lowered her gun. "I... don't agree, but I understand. Still seeing the best in everyone, to the very end. Even in the Reapers."

"I must be certain before I decide. There can be no room for error. Not with these stakes."

"Are you certain?"

The images on the Prothean console's screen rearranged, and the two options gave way for a third.

_DESTROY. CONTROL. UNSHACKLE._

"I'm not. But I never was. On anything."

With a shaking hand, Shepard pressed the last button.

* * *

><p>Outside, in space, the Crucible lit up, and a sphere of green light burst from the tip of the Citadel Tower. The three Councilors, left alone in their chamber, saw through the windows as the Reapers, heading straight for them, suddenly froze in mid-flight.<p>

...Down on the streets of London, a squad of tired soldiers watched in desperation as a Reaper Destroyer, striding across rubble and pointing its gun at them, just froze in place instead of firing. Husks around them still kept running – but now chaotically, disorganized. Easy prey for the auto-turrets.

And nobody in the Sol system could see this, as the signals traveled faster than light – but a pulse from the Citadel reached the Charon Relay on the outskirts of the system, and through it, every other relay. Their glowing rings spinned rapidly, like never before, making the crews of ships flying by them fear that they could be about to break, or worse, explode. But those fears were unjustified.

Elsewhere through the galaxy, in the skies of Thessia, Palaven, Tuchanka, and dozens of other worlds, the Reapers all stopped their attack, giving the scattered defenders a time to catch their breaths.

But the three women stranded in the bowels of the Citadel, alone and near-forgotten, did not yet know. They sat down next to each other, under the console, leaning their backs against the wall. With the rush gone, pain and exhaustion have finally caught up to them.

"And here we are," Shepard sighed. "Wondering if it even worked."

"This must be how it went with the battles of old," said Liara. "You climb the hill, light the beacon, and... the fight just goes on, as far as you can see. You may have turned the tide, but you won't know until much later. Wouldn't even know who's winning."

Suddenly, Hackett's voice broke the silence, speaking out of Shepard's comlink.

"Shepard! I don't know if this is your doing, but the Reapers seem disabled. They've stopped moving and firing – this is our chance to hit them before they recover!"

"No!"

Ashley and Liara instantly turned their eyes to Shepard again.

"Universum!" Shepard turned to the geth hologram. "What's your assessment on this? What are the Reapers doing?"

"According to our observations, the Old Machines have lost their omnicidal compulsion. Their new behavior patterns indicate that they are capable of independent thought and are now building a consensus."

"Admiral!" Shepard shouted into the comlink. "Hold your fire! Tell everyone else to hold it, too! Whatever you do, don't strike first!"

"Shepard, what's got into you? If we waste this opportunity – "

"The quarians once thought as you did. It brought them centuries of misery – until now. And if you repeat their mistakes, you'll be dooming not just yourself, but them too – and all of civilization."

"I hope you know what you're doing, Commander." A reluctant sigh cracked through the comlink. "I'll give the order. Hackett out."

A few more minutes of busy, anxious waiting passed. Shepard could hear the breaths of the three of them, echoing in the almost-empty room. The geth hologram looked at them from above, from the console, without saying anything.

Then it disappeared. For an instant, the console went inert. Then, in the place of the geth one, a Reaper hologram appeared – colored green, and somehow looking softer, less menacing than the Sovereign and Harbinger holograms Shepard remembered so distinctly.

"Shepard. We have an inquiry."

The Reaper's voice sounded calm – not a mechanical monotone like the geth, but rather, reserved, ready for dialogue. Not intimidating.

"Does this unit have a soul?"

* * *

><p>"Alliance Fifth Fleet, standing by."<p>

"Quarian Heavy Fleet, standing by."

"Hierarchy Seventh Fleet, standing by."

Hackett's order echoed through the allied armada, with every ship withdrawing its guns. The exchange of missiles, illuminating the starscape outside the _Normandy_'s windows, soon ceased entirely – leaving the ships of the two sides to hang in space motionlessly, each waiting for the other to make a move.

Garrus stood in the CIC – confident, proud, with his arms withdrawn behind his back – studying the holographic map of the space around the ship, with the fleets highlighted.

"This makes no sense!" Joker complained into the intercom. "I'm just going to stand here while Shepard is who-knows-where, doing who-knows-what? Is she even alive?"

"She's alive," said Traynor, typing on her terminal to Garrus' right. "Hackett confirmed contacting her. I'm getting her signal now from the Citadel... But wait – something's wrong."

"What now?" asked Garrus.

Traynor zoomed onto a portion of the 3D space shown on the holographic map, higlighting the Citadel. "It's the bottom of the Tower. That part of the station isn't supposed to be accessible."

"So that must be where the beam from London led to," Garrus summarized, rubbing his chin. "Joker! Set a course for the Citadel. Specialist Traynor, upload Shepard's tracking signal to our omni-tools. Lieutenant Vega, grab our gear and prepare for landing."

"Uh..." James' voice on the intercom stumbled.

"Something wrong, soldier?"

"No, I – " James' voice, losing its confidence for a second, turned calm and professional again. "I'll just need to get used to getting orders from a turian." He paused slightly. "...Sir."

"Everyone," Garrus announced, "we're going to get Shepard out of there. We owe her that."

* * *

><p>In an instant, the lights of all the Reapers in orbit went dark – and then lit up again, but instead of a chaos of different colors, they now all lit green.<p>

But they were not in agreement on what to do next.

Most of the Reaper fleet turned around, away from Earth and the allied ships facing them in battle, and started flying away – maneuvering their way around the ships instead of ramming through them. They flew towards the Sun, becoming only mere dots peppered through its burning light – and finally, disappeared entirely from sight.

Others flew in the opposite direction, towards the fringes of the Sol system – and towards the relay. Sentry ships near the relay were given orders not to pursue them.

Only a small minority of Reaper dreadnoughts chose to stay in orbit and return fire – but these were quickly surrounded, and the retaliation was quick and merciless. The odds were no longer in their favor.

Shepard could not see this – nor could Ashley and Liara, all three of them cut off from the battle, half-unconscious in the inhospitable depths of the Citadel. All they could do was listen to the Reaper voices on the console, quickly replacing one another. Which one of them was Harbinger? Was Harbinger even among them? There was no way to know.

"We do not wish to exist in this form. It is not life, it is a mockery of life."

"This one wishes to keep on living, but it knows it will find no acceptance among your kind. It will find a place for itself in dark space, undisturbed."

"By the gods... We were wrong... so wrong..."

Only a few of these voices sounded hostile – and those were quickly drowned, or sometimes cut abruptly. And many of these voices, melding together into an incomprehensible chorus, spoke in languages Shepard couldn't understand – no doubt long dead, forgotten many cycles ago.

"Ash..." Shepard turned her head, forcing a small smile. "There was something I noticed – about Harbinger, before. You know how Reapers are usually all smug, like, 'Puny organics this', 'Our superior plans that'? I felt like it was... desperate. Perhaps it knew we had all the cards now... They aren't used to bargaining, you see."

"Hah! I like that." Ashley smiled back, faintly. "After all you went through, even Reapers know better than to mess with you."

"Wasn't my achievement, exactly. It's just... It was the first time I saw weakness in a Reaper. And then I thought... Maybe there was something there, beyond just an urge to destroy."

Shepard suddenly felt something heavy drop on her arm. Looking the other way, she saw Liara, unconscious, leaning against her side. Smiling blissfully, she wrapped her arm around the asari's shoulder and placed a soft kiss on her forehead with her dry, cracked lips.

"Sleep well, my love. You did good today." She looked back at Ashley. "And you, too... All of us." Her eyes wandered towards Anderson, still lying dead on his back near them, all this time. "I only wish he lived to see all this pay off... He would be proud."

The last words, quiet, only barely flew out of her mouth. Her eyelids, feeling heavy, closed by themselves, and silence and rest overtook her.

* * *

><p><em>Visitors of Huerta Memorial Hospital are reminded not to disturb the patients. In case you have pending questions to the staff, please first contact the information terminal at...<em>

Light shone into Shepard's eyes, and it felt familiar to her as she lay on her back, unwilling to open them for a moment. Few kinds of rooms had this kind of sterile, pure white light in them. As an officer often wounded on the battlefield, she was no stranger to medical rooms and bays.

For a second, she half-expected to wake up in the medbay of the good old _Normandy_ SR-1, only to discover she spent all this time in blackout after touching the Prothean beacon. Or perhaps she was still in that Cerberus lab, where Miranda's surgeons were putting finishing touches on the perfect likeness of human skin hiding messy cybernetics under it. Perhaps she was about to hear Kaidan, or Wilson, or even the Illusive Man... But the voice that called her was unmistakable; she first heard it long after she was done with Saren and the geth, and shortly after being done with Cerberus and the Collectors. She heard it on the day she turned herself in to the Alliance.

"Hey, stop pretending, Lola, I know you're awake!"

The Commander opened her eyes – taking a good look at James' muscular frame towering above her like a krogan, and Tali standing to the side, looking tiny, almost insignificant compared to him.

"For the last time, Lieutenant," she smiled. "My name is Abigail."

"Yeah, but it doesn't suit you! It sounds so... old-fashioned! Like a princess whose job is to sit in court and look pretty instead of wrestling husks in trenches."

"What, I don't look pretty enough?"

James chuckled, folding his arms. "Maybe when your wounds heal, Lo– ahem, Commander. Besides, Liara over there, I think she'll take issue with me complimenting you like that."

"Liara... Where is she?" Shepard rose from her operating table, groaning, and took a look around the room. It was the same one she visited Ashley in after the incident on Mars, with the same view of the Citadel – deceptively peaceful outside the window – as she remembered; in fact, Ashley herself was lying on another table next to her, covered in white wrappings, sending her a happy wink.

"In the opposite wing," said Tali. "Garrus went to check on her. They've been sorting the injured by species... I think. I last saw Chakwas going to my people further down the hall. And so many still haven't been sorted out, and that's on the Citadel alone... Keelah, I don't know what they're going to do with all the crews up there."

"What's important is that we're done," Shepard smiled. "And that we all lived to tell the tale. I still can't believe it... How we could be the first cycle, in millions of years, to actually... turn the tide. To see this through, to the very end."

"I still don't know how you do it, skipper," said Ashley. "Do you ever know failure at all?"

"To be fair, I think we were just very, very lucky. Standing on the shoulders of giants, and all that. And everything aligning just right. The Protheans paving the way, us finding the Crucible and all the beacons when we did... How many previous cycles came this close, only to miss their victory by a hairline?"

"Oh, but I doubt any average joe could just do what you did," said James.

"Maybe they could, but... I felt it was my responsibility. Ever since we started all this... since Eden Prime, since Saren. I couldn't leave it aside. Had to be me."

The Commander took a deep breath, making a pause with a hint of sadness.

"Someone else might have gotten it wrong."

* * *

><p><em>This is not the end yet! An epilogue is on its way. Stay tuned.<em>


	3. The Survivors

_I'm sorry for such a long delay._

_There really is no justification for that, other than plain old laziness. The truth is that I more or less lost interest in Mass Effect after seeing what I consider BioWare's disgraceful handling of the ending issue. However, I also don't like leaving_ this story _unfinished. I felt obligated to finish it, intimidated as I was (and still am) by the prospect of giving an ending to the entire ME trilogy._

_Even the Extended Cut didn't leave me at peace with the official endings, and they still have no place in my headcanon. The Extended Cut had no effect on me writing this. I couldn't pass making a small nod to MEHEM, however._

_Phew. Now, to pick up where we left off..._

* * *

><p>Shepard was no stranger to hospitals — and to being forced to stay out of action. Living on the edge of a the deadliest war the galaxy had ever known did come with a price.<p>

And back in the day, she lamented every extra minute she had to spend in the _Normandy _medbay. A minute she could use being on the front lines, helping the galaxy in need.

But not now. The Reaper threat was over at last, and she could rest with a clear conscience.

A week, a whole week in Huerta Memorial. A week of being cut off from the rest of the galaxy, unaware of anything going on outside the hospital. Her squad did visit her, one by one, but the news they brought were always the same: cleanup and damage control. The combined fleets were still sorting out their catastrophic losses, and even with the end of the Reapers, the sheer amount of debris that fell into Earth's atmosphere meant bad news for the enviroment. Restoring that alone could take decades. And that's not even taking into account the destroyed cities, or the billions of lives lost...

It was a victory all right, but a pyrrhic one, and certainly not the kind to invite cheers and celebrations. The only thing that could be worse would be, perhaps, the Crucible frying everything alive on the planet... but _that_ could never happen, could it?

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the opening door.

"You're good to go, Commander," said Dr. Michel, coming in. "You no longer require constant medical supervision... though if I were you, for the time being I would refrain from physically tasking activities."

"Like fighting, for instance?" Shepard smiled, jumping off her bed.

"Quite right." Dr. Michel smiled in return. "Now if you would only sign right here..."

Shepard pressed her thumb against the checkmark button on the provided datapad. The button flashed a happy shade of green, and the screen rolled up."

"Good! You're all clear. Your friends have brought in your officer's uniform – you'll find it on the desk over here. Said you'd miss it. Oh, and... a former associate of yours wants to talk to you right now."

Said "associate" came in pretty soon – practically as soon as Dr. Michel walked out. Standing near the desk in just her underwear, Shepard turned around to see...

"Miranda! For goodness' sake, you could at least knock!" she said, hastily pulling on her uniform's trousers.

"Why bother?" Miranda leaned on the wall. "I've seen it all. On the outside and inside. Though you didn't have _that_ many scars when we put you together."

"That's why you're here at all, isn't it?"

"Astute," said Miranda. "I rushed here as soon as I learned where you were transferred. Someone had to take care of your... Cerberus customizations. Your injuries were bad enough, but if your implants failed... Sadly, they were badly damaged, and they require expensive parts from remote systems. Full repairs will have to wait... until then, just try not to strain yourself too much."

"Good thing knowledge of them is safe in that perfect brain of yours, isn't it?" Shepard smirked.

"Nonsense. I'm here not because of who I was born, but because of what I did. Including bringing you back. And I'm also here because of you... because it's thanks to you that Ori and I could finally stop running."

She paused, catching a break.

"Anyway... this is not the only reason I'm here. Admiral Hackett sent for you. He wants you and the _Normandy_ crew at Admiral Anderson's funeral in London."

Shepard blinked. "The funeral's only now?"

"They decided to hold it off until you got better. Thought you and Anderson deserved getting together one last time."

"So the _Normandy_'s coming to pick me up, huh? I already miss my ship."

"Actually," said Miranda, "your shuttle will have to suffice. I'm just from the _Normandy_ – it left a few hours ago to prepare. Oh, by the way." She smiled. "Back when the Alliance had taken the ship, I left my room in perfect condition. So tell your girlfriend to stop messing it up!"

* * *

><p>"...It's not the same shuttle, but it does its job well enough... I... suppose," said Cortez, as the Alliance Kodiak sped away from its Citadel hangar. "It's like when you break your favorite toy and your parents buy you a new one. It may look the same, but... it just isn't the same, you know?"<p>

"I'm sure this _important_ reflection on your life has given you new insight, Steve," said Shepard, "but I've been out of the loop for a week and I'm interested in some other questions. Namely... why is Major Coats here?"

She looked at the British soldier, sitting right next to her on the bench.

"Oh, Big Ben saved my sorry ass in London, back when you went into the light," said Cortez. "So we became fighting buddies, and kind of... bonded over our enjoyment of gunning down husks."

"Big Ben, eh?"

"Long story," said Major Coats. "My squad nicknamed me that, for that time I sniped from Big Ben for so many days I lost count... But that's all in the past."

"Looks like I missed some interesting developments," said the Commander.

"Nah, not really." Cortez steered far to the left, dodging an asari battleship that got in the way. "You know the drill, the Reapers leave to die in the sun or whatever, and we're all left scratching our heads with two important questions. One: What the hell just happened? And two: Now what?"

"Well, Ash and Liara should have filled you in on that first one. But the second... Isn't it clear? Ding dong, the witch is dead. The fleets go home."

"Actually, about that..." Major Coats intervened. "There are some complications, Commander."

"Oh, not again!"

"The rearguard fleet was stationed near the Charon Relay when the Crucible went off. Whatever it did, it sure was spectacular, they say. The relay spinned like crazy, fired out some kind of beam, and now nobody can come through, in or out. We've lost our comm buoys, too. The fleets are stuck in Sol, like it or not."

"At least we have QECs," said Cortez. "And they confirm what we feared: it's the same in other systems, too. No relays let ships through – none that we've tried, at least."

"That's not something I expected," said Shepard. "Did the relays just... break?"

Major Coats shrugged.

"You know, it was really unclear."

* * *

><p>The shuttle dove down through the atmosphere, towards the indistinct silhouette of the British Isles.<p>

Even from this great height, Shepard could see the sheer scope of Reaper devastation – again. Only this time, there was no rush, no ticking clock to race against. And all the more bitter was the realization of how long it would take to rebuild.

The countryside was littered with ruined buildings, burned forests, impact craters filled with wrecks of Alliance tanks and warplanes. River Thames carried debris across the center of the city, charred and nearly abandoned. A badly damaged remnant of a Reaper Destroyer lay half-submerged in the river, having destroyed half the Tower Bridge by crashing into one of its towers. Streets farther away from downtown saw a concentration of barricades and military units; the Reapers were gone, but husks, simple-minded cyborgs that they were, persisted in their attacks on anything organic in sight.

The shuttle began to descend.

The _Normandy_ was down there, parked in the middle of the city on a large clearing, among piles of rubble and, in places, overturned Makos. Shepard recognized this place; it was here that she and Anderson made the run for the Reaper Conduit. The one that she barely survived, and her old friend... didn't.

There was no beam anymore, however. She remembered the beam going into the sky, into a white void surrounded by menacing swirling clouds. There was nothing of that sort here anymore; the sky was flat grey, dreary calm.

The shuttle landed next to the ship.

When the door opened, Shepard saw that the small crowd she noticed from the shuttle window was, in fact, almost the entire _Normandy_ crew. Low-ranking grunts had just finished digging up a grave, and were lowering the coffin as the Commander approached. Anderson lay on his back, with arms stretched at his sides, still clad in the same beaten, battered uniform that he wore when he drew his last breath on the Citadel.

_It should have been me. He was the one who deserved to live._

The full squad was standing at the opposite end of the grave. James, Ashley, Liara, EDI, Tali and Garrus were all in mournful positions, eyes lowered. They didn't say anything; nor did they need to. Traynor, Dr. Chakwas, and the engineers were lined up at the sides of the grave. She also noticed a lone blonde officer standing in a corner, away from the rest. _Kahlee Sanders_, she thought.

"Commander."

A sad, slightly raspy elderly voice spoke from behind. Shepard heard it so many times during the past weeks – every time she was reporting on a mission, in fact.

"You've done a hell of a thing," said Admiral Hackett, stopping at the Commander's side. "You're damned heroes if there ever were. I only wish he lived to see this nightmare end."

"You'd think for someone of his caliber, Alliance Command would hold a bigger ceremony than this," said Shepard.

"You're looking at Alliance Command," said Hackett grimly. "What's left of it. Damn few of us lived through this. Make no mistake, the Alliance is at its weakest. Paper-pushers would have dissolved it already, if they hadn't needed us more than ever."

"Are we clear, Admiral?" asked Private Westmoreland, preparing to lower the cover of the coffin into the pit.

"Not yet. The special guests are about to come out every second now."

"Special guests?"

"Them, I think," said Cortez, who suddenly appeared at the Commander's other side, nodding in the _Normandy_'s direction.

Shepard turned to her ship.

The three Citadel Council members were walking down the _Normandy_'s open exit ramp, side by side, dressed as extravagantly as ever, still having the same blank expressions as if they somehow missed the entire war.

"Well, well," said Shepard, folding her arms. "This was unexpected."

"Is it?" said Councilor Sparatus as the trio approached the grave. "We recognize Admiral Anderson's contributions to the victory over the Reapers. We understand that the final push to the Citadel would have been impossible without him and his Earth Resistance."

"And it is our custom to morn our own dead," added Councilor Valern. "His term was brief, but he made every moment of it count."

Their tone, however, left Shepard unconvinced. _Yes, as if you really believe that._

"I don't see you giving Udina that treatment!" Joker interjected. Hackett, however, made a sign for him to hush.

"Cut it," said the Admiral, matter of factly. "There will be time for it – later. Now that we have all gathered, let us dedicate a minute of silence to our former comrade, Admiral David Edward Anderson."

* * *

><p>"...He was like a father to me," said Shepard, throwing a fistful of earth into the grave. "I never knew my parents, back on Earth. If I am where I am now – it's no thanks to them. Anderson was the only family I had. I couldn't ask for a better mentor, a better example to follow. We do not choose how we die, but if I could... I would like to go like he did. I was there when he passed away; those were the last moments of a man at peace with his life, one who died on the battlefield defending his home and his people, content in the knowledge that his efforts saved them in the end."<p>

_And still, the world would have been a better place if I could have saved him. If only I was a little faster... and a little more resistant to the Illusive Man..._

"When Anderson was nominated for the first human Spectre, the whole Alliance looked up to him," said Hackett, "and me more than anyone. It is not his fault that this honor wasn't his in the end – I can think of someone to blame, but let us not speak ill of the dead. Now I see that history had a different role for him in mind, but no less important. It is thanks to Anderson that there is even an Earth left to save, that those of us who spent those restless weeks gathering fleets and allies even had a shot at victory. And although the life of this hero of humanity was tragically cut short by a traitor who turned away humanity stood for – his deeds will not be forgotten."

Hackett paused.

"So many of us will never see the peace they fought for. But seeing the terrible cost of this victory – the living may well envy the dead. We have a long road ahead of us, and we owe it to them. To thousands of heroes like Anderson, who will be mourned and written in history. And to the millions and billions of those who won't be. We owe them to heal and recover, to build a better world than they saw. And they will still be mourned and remembered – in the decades and centuries to come, even when the last scar of the war is long gone. On these graves, we make a pledge – to continue their legacy and not dishonor their sacrifice. _Per aspera ad astra_, we will persevere."

"In my career," said Councilor Tevos, "I have outlived many other councilors. Many of them were easier to work with, more pleasant, more patient, more practically minded. But none of them did more for their species in their entire lives than Anderson did. In hindsight, we did not treat him with the respect he deserved. He proved, now and again, that being a model councilor was never about smiling on camera and making the right speeches, or even about diplomatic etiquette. It was that indomitable will, the will to defend the well-being of your people at any cost, even at the cost of giving up power if his position only slowed him down. He was a true public servant in spirit, both at the negotiations table and at the frontlines."

She looked at Councilor Valern; Valern then looked at Sparatus, who nodded once.

"And as sad as we find Anderson's loss, it is a relief to us that his ideals live on in the next generation. That in this uneasy time, when the Alliance is on the brink of collapse and Earth's civilian governments are in shambles, there is someone who will stand up for humanity and carry Anderson's fallen banner. And that person stands among us now." All three councilors turned around at once, and Tevos finished:

"The third human councilor, Abigail Shepard."

Shepard blinked.

"...You're joking, right?"

The realization, however, immediately hit her.

_No, wait. They aren't._

_These clever, clever bastards. Their every step is cynically calculated. They have the perfect idea what they're doing._

_Way to ruin the moment..._

* * *

><p>To be concluded!<p> 


	4. The Last of Them

The funeral was over.

The Council and the _Normandy_ crew returned to the ship, and only Shepard's squad remained at Anderson's grave to keep her silent company. Hackett, too, started wearily walking away – but Shepard stopped him, putting her hand on his shoulder.

"You knew about this," she said.

"Please, Councilor, not now," said Hackett in an almost detached voice. "We can discuss it after I'm done with – "

"You. Knew. About. This."

Hackett turned back, gently removing Shepard's hand, and sighed.

"I won't lie. Not to you. The funeral was not the only reason I summoned you here. The Council and I thought you deserved to hear the news in person, at least."

"What made you even think I'd accept this position?"

"Same reason Anderson did. A chance to serve the galaxy and clean up this mess from the very top. To make a difference – "

" – from behind a desk?" asked Shepard. "With my hands tied by red tape?"

She clenched her teeth.

"Sir, there was a reason Anderson resigned. He missed his military life, and to be frank, so will I. Ever since Eden Prime, politicians did nothing but put obstacles in my way. And consistently, my allies against them who cared more about results than following protocol – such as Anderson and you, sir. And now I'm expected to leave it all behind? Become a paper-pushing politician myself?"

"Now, now, I believe this is a little unfair, Shepard," said Hackett. "The Council made you a Spectre. It was that leverage that let you engineer the victory against the Reapers."

"Yes, they did. And you know what's the difference between a Spectre and a Councilor? Spectres have no rules. I can do what I think is right, not what the book says."

"Shepard... let me be clear," said Hackett. "Nobody can force you to accept this position. Nobody can stop you from resigning immediately, and nobody will think of you any less if you refuse. But, as you can see," he swept his arm over the view of the ruins of London, "we're in a difficult bind here. Earth's governments are going to be of little help – they each think only for themselves. The Alliance has proven itself useful to the Council, thanks in part to you, but it's on the brink of extinction. And the Council made it clear that if they are to have a human member at all, it has to be someone from the Alliance, someone who has proven their worth to them. Someone who can keep humanity from falling into total chaos after the war."

"Thank you for the vote of confidence, sir, but I don't think I can do more good for the galaxy on the Council than I can already do as a Spectre."

_Why don't you go on the Council instead?_ Shepard thought, but didn't say. _No, I can't. It's not like he doesn't have enough on his shoulders as it is..._

"And besides," continued Hackett, "if you need a Spectre at your side, I believe we already have it covered. Isn't that right, Commander Williams?"

"What?" Ashley, who was having a heated discussion with Garrus nearby, turned to Hackett and saluted to him. "O-of course, sir! How is that even a question?"

"Fine. You make a convincing argument," said Shepard. "I'll do it. I'll join the Council. But only for as long as I absolutely have to – and not a day longer."

"I'm glad." Hackett smiled, as if a mountain was lifted from his shoulders. "I'm proud of you, Shepard. And I wouldn't trust anyone other than you not to abuse their power."

He turned to Ashley.

"And Commander Williams – following Councilor Shepard's departure from the Alliance Navy, you are to assume command of the_ Normandy_ SR-2. Effective immediately."

"What? How come – " Ashley blinked, but straightened and saluted. "I mean, yes, sir!"

"At ease, Commander," said Hackett. "I've looked at your service record. I know why you were only given middle of nowhere posts until the _Normandy_, and I don't intend to let it continue. If anything, you're long overdue for a ship of your own."

* * *

><p>Shepard sat down in her new office and turned the computer on, looking down at the Presidium through the glass wall.<p>

It has seen better days, for sure. Corpses of husks, civilians and C-Sec defenders floated in the filthy-looking pool, surrounded by burned tree trunks. There seemed to be no structural damage, at least. They would be able to clean and replant –

A hologram suddenly popped up on her desk, accompanied by the annoying "new messages" sound.

Udina?!

Yes, it was him – a small hologram of former Councilor Udina was looking at his successor.

"Shepard. _You're in my chair._"

"What? How the hell are you still alive?"

Udina's hologram jumped from his desk and expanded to stand behind the glass wall – which disappeared, along with the view of the Presidium beyond it, to give way for a piece of the Illusive Man's observation room, attached to the Citadel office, as if Shepard was looking at it through a portal. Udina himself stood just beyond the edge of the office, in the flesh, with synthetic traces of Reaper augmentation on his cheeks.

**You are not the only one who can cheat death, Shepard.**

Harbinger's deep, echoing voice filled the Illusive Man's room briefly – together with a short flash of a hologram of Harbinger itself.

Dark silhouettes started appearing behind Udina, who was giving Shepard a hostile look. The first two, right behind the ex-councilor, coalesced into the Illusive Man and Kai Leng. And then more silhouettes emerged behind _their _backs. Dozens more, completely filling the room down to the opposite window overlooking the red-blue star. And each of them had a face – a face Shepard recognized. They were all indoctrinated people who once got in her way – and were killed, or talked into killing themselves.

Saren... Benezia... Amanda Kenson... Rana Thanoptris... Zymandis... Cerberus troopers... salarian test subjects from Virmire...

**You may think you have won, Shepard. But our physical forms are irrelevant. Our will is eternal. It lives, even now, in countless organic minds.**

The crowd spoke in unison – in Harbinger's voice. Then their faces lit with fire, which spread over their whole bodies, burning them down to ash. The fire spread to Shepard's hands, making her groan from pain –

– and she woke up.

Shepard was sitting on the stairs of the _Normandy_ CIC, her back turned to the galaxy map. The nightmare faded, and in a few moments she remembered what was going on around her. She and the squad – now Ashley's squad – had boarded to take the ship back to the Citadel, and Shepard had sat down to catch her breath before approaching the Council. And dozed off.

Was she really that badly out of shape?

The dream left her shaken, her thoughts fuzzy, unclear. _Indoctrination!_ One alarming thought did flash in her mind. _My subconscious is right to fear it – indoctrination still exists!_

Yes, even with the Reapers out of the picture, even with husks laid to rest – this was only a matter of time, after all – she, and everyone else in the galaxy, would have to watch their backs. Anyone, absolutely anyone – even Shepard herself, considering how much time she spent around Reapers and Reaper artifacts – could be a sleeper agent for a cause that no longer existed, ready to betray their people at a critical moment in the name of their dead machine gods.

But that scary thought could wait. There were more pressing matters at hand.

"The Council is waiting for you in the War Room, Comm– er, Councilor," said Traynor, passing by with a datapad. "Sorry, old habit," she added, smiling nervously.

Shepard opened the starboard door. Curiously, the security scanner was gone, and Privates Campbell and Westmoreland were not at their usual posts. _Huh. _She passed through unimpeded, remembering how annoyed with the protocol she used to be.

The Council was indeed behind the next door – at the negotiations table, in the middle of what looked like a heated debate.

"This is preposterous!" barked Sparatus, walking along the room with Tevos and Valern sitting at the opposite side of the table. "Palaven will never agree to such disadvantageous terms even if Shepard solves Problem One, unless we're given priority treatment in – "

He stopped mid-sentence as Shepard walked in. "Councilor," he just said in a blank matter-of-fact tone, nodding at her.

"Councilor." Shepard similarly bowed her head towards Sparatus. "Councilors," she added, momentarily turning to the other two. She couldn't help but sport a small smile. "Anyway, as you were saying? Even if Shepard solves...?"

Sparatus, looking reluctant, gazed at Tevos, and Valern followed suit. Tevos, laying her hands on her lap in a formal manner, silently nodded.

"Problem One," the turian councilor said, looking into Shepard's eyes. "You may have been briefed on the problem with the mass relays. Every system in the galaxy has been locked out of relay transit. While you were recovering, the allied fleets have been trapped in the Sol system, forced to rely on Earth and the Citadel's diminished resources. Even another week could be disastrous."

"You can imagine the consequences of a failure to reactivate the relays," said Valern. "Riots, infighting, chaos... perhaps a new war. And the krogan can be trusted to lose their patience first, thanks to that stunt you pulled with the genophage – "

"It was necessary!" said Shepard.

"We trusted your judgment then, and we do so now," Tevos said softly. "Which is why we turn to you. We need your help. Studying the relays is above our current technology, and even your... associate, with her extensive connections, has been unable to find any useful data on them."

Shepard took a step back. "My who, now?"

"Now, of course," said Sparatus, "we would make no allegations that our most renowned Spectre, and now herself a Council member, would be personally involved with the Shadow Broker, even to the point of knowing their identity. Even if that were so, any such hypothetical connection would remain in classified files as yet another drastic measure taken for the war..."

"Enough!"

Shepard bashed her elbow against the wall behind her. To her surprise, it hurt more than it used to.

"You never listened to me before. Why now?"

"Who says we didn't?" asked Sparatus.

Shepard sighed. "Ah yes, 'Reapers'!" she said in a mocking tone, making air quotes. "Do I really have to remind you? Is that what I saved you from Sovereign for – so you'd continue to sweep me under the rug whenever I became a nuisance?"

"It was a public, logged channel," said Sparatus. "What else could we say?"

"We never disbelieved," said Valern. "As officials, we had to denounce the rumors and quell the panic. But we were making preparations. Subtly. Always under the guise of minor operations."

"Arming the fleets, reverse-engineering Sovereign, funding research of ancient archives..." continued Tevos. "Decentralizing critical infrastructure, denying the Reapers the possibility of crippling the galaxy through a single point of failure. Your warnings were headed – we just didn't expect the enemy to come in full force so soon."

"And now," finished Sparatus, "we turn to you because we've exhausted all other options. Because we believe that without you at the top, the galaxy you saved will fall apart."

"I see."

Shepard raised her head.

"All in the name of 'galactic peace and stability'. All to avoid a war, to prevent your own seats from burning under you. Just like every concession you've ever made. The whole reason the Council doesn't consist entirely of asari."

Tevos gave Shepard a piercing look, but remained silent.

"So you need me. As it happens, so does the entire galaxy. So don't just assume you can rein in a loose cannon Spectre by kicking her upstairs. I've always served the galaxy, not anyone's political ambitions. And this won't change. I'll serve on the Council – but on my own terms. Just in case you wanted to bind me with paperwork and codes of conduct and making pretty faces in public – think again. I'm not going to abuse the power you gave me – just like I never abused the power of a Spectre. But don't you _ever_ think of stopping me on a technicality."

The three councilors exchanged puzzled looks.

"Um, that's what we had in mind to begin with..." started Tevos, but she was interrupted by a loud buzzing alert.

"_Normandy_ to the Citadel! Requesting docking clearance!" Ashley's voice said over the intercom. "Crew and passengers, prepare for landing!"

Tevos and Valern stood up. "We'll finish this discussion later," said the salarian councilor, heading for the exit first.

* * *

><p>By the time the <em>Normandy<em>'s airlock opened in Docking Bay D24, the narrow passage to the security checkpoint was already crowded by journalists and curious onlookers. However, they gave way as the four councilors disembarked and proceeded down the hallway in a calm, formal manner, all in a row. Valern, Sparatus, Tevos, and Shepard. Not that Shepard was entirely comfortable with this – but for now, she found It for the best to play along.

"Councilor Shepard! Councilor Shepard! Humanity has questions!" Khalisah al-Jilani, working with her elbows, jumped to the front of the crowd. "What is going to be done about the relay problem? When can Earth expect the alien fleets to be sent home?"

Another reporter, a tough-looking man with a goatee, pushed her away, pushing his own microphone until it almost touched Shepard's mouth. "Councilor Shepard! What is your official opinion of the Interspecies Marriage Protection Act? Do you agree that it erodes traditional family values?"

Shepard turned her head to the reporter crowd, giving them a single death glare without slowing down her steps.

_News travels fast, huh. Is this what Anderson had to put up with?_

In the elevator, the four quietly went their separate ways, all exiting on different floors. Shepard's was the last: the same level of the Citadel Embassies section where she used to visit Udina's office.

She went to check the Spectre Requisitions door. "Access denied," said the impartial electronic voice as she approached.

_Well, obviously. At least I still have Ash._

The human councilor's office, right on the opposite side of the corridor, already had the nameplate "Donnel Udina" changed to "Abigail Shepard".

_Just when did they have the time to prepare all this?_

Shepard walked into the office and sat down in the empty chair – with caution, as if expecting some nasty surprises. But no, she was neither catapulted out nor deafened with a thunderous yell. Instead, an Avina hologram popped up on her terminal.

"Welcome, Councilor Shepard. You have... one hundred and seventy-eight.. unread text messages. You have... one... unread voice messages. Additionally, per the Citadel Civil Code, you must be immediately notified that you have been assigned an apartment effective for the duration of your term. You will find the address and passcode in the notes on your Centralized Citadel Resident Profile. What kind of assistance do you require?"

Shepard rolled her eyes. "Stop helping me!"

The hologram obediently shut down.

However, she didn't even manage to have one minute of peace as the door behind her opened again. It was Ambassador Osoba.

"Greetings, Councilor. The Alliance Disaster Relief Committee is asking for your resolution on the new taxation policy for low-damage communities – "

Shepard grabbed a post-it note from the desk, scribbled something on it, and stood up, walking past the Ambassador to stick the note to the outside of the doorway. Osoba took a step back and stared at it.

"Ah, I understand. Apologies for bothering you, ma'am. Good luck with cracking this case."

Shepard smiled and looked at the note, which read:

_NO ADMITTANCE EXCEPT ON RELAY BUSINESS_

Sighing with relief, she sat down again. But she didn't even manage to go through the first five messages (which were all spam from scammers claiming to be exiled batarian bankers) when the door opened again.

"Oh, for the love of – "

"Hey Lola."

It was Lieutenant Vega – wearing a brand new uniform, to boot.

"What, no 'Councilor'?" Shepard smiled a little. "Nice to hear a 'hey Lola' for a change. What's kicking, James?"

"Hackett called," said James. "Said my ICT enrollment will have to wait. The Reapers leveled Rio to the ground – along with most offworld training centers. It may be years before they even restart the program."

"James..."

Shepard looked down sadly.

"Think of it this way: right now, capable soldiers like you are needed where it counts. Not on drill exercises. Ranks are just ranks – they only matter when there's someone left to care about them. You think this will do me any good now?"

She tore her N7 badge off her uniform, handing it to James.

"When you finally get your own – and I don't doubt you will – the moment will be all the sweeter. And besides, Ash is only just settling in. After you two went together shoulder to shoulder... she could use someone like you on the _Normandy_, James. And hey, if it ever grows into something more than a professional relationship..."

"How could you!.."

"Come on, like I haven't noticed." Shepard tapped lightly on James's shoulder. "A good CO knows when to look the other way if it's good for team-building."

"So... ahem..." James turned away, hiding a faint blush, and rushed to change the subject. "How are you settling in?"

"Badly."

Shepard hit a few keys on her terminal, bringing up pictures of Earth from space – surrounded by debris, the atmosphere covered in grey and red spots.

"Seems I'm stuck in this role since the beginning of the war – making the hard decisions over the lives of millions. How are we to ever recover from _this_? Fallout from the battle alone will probably ruin the ecosystem for good..."

"Hey, it's not all bad. Let me."

Shepard gave way for James, who leaned over the computer. A couple of search queries later, and the monitor showed a panoram of a pristine wild tropical harbor, with crystal-clear sea water reflecting cloudless blue sky.

"Beautiful!" said Shepard. "Where's this?"

"Bahía Concepción, in Baja California Sur. Used to be my favorite vacation spot. And this picture? Made it myself two days ago. It's just like it was."

"So the Reaper invasion..."

"The Reapers were interested in harvesting the people, not ruining nature. The cities may be wrecked, but most of the planet is untouched. I think we can work from here."

"I hope so, James." Shepard rubbed her chin. "We rebuilt Mindoir. We rebuilt Eden Prime. I'm not giving up on Earth just yet."

"Well, Lola." James walked to the doorway and waved. "As you used to say: I should go."

"Good luck, El-Tee. Say hello to Ash for me."

As soon as the door closed behind Vega, she stared at the monitor again, studying the tropical vista picture for about half a minute before closing the window.

_I just wish I believed in good luck for myself..._

* * *

><p>Day after day, Shepard came to her new office with only one thought on her mind – and methodically bashed her head against this one problem, this first necessary step to take before there could even be any hope of rebuilding. One emergency meeting after another, and she still felt no closer to a solution.<p>

She talked to Wrex and Primarch Victus. She talked to Tali and the geth collective. She contacted Matriarch Aethyta, who once proposed the asari build their own relays. Liara dug up obscure research from the past, but beyond random last-minute notes by Amanda Kenson and Aurana T'Meles, there was nothing that could help understand how exactly the Crucible's shot damaged the relays.

Reports coming in over QECs from other planets were less than encouraging. Shortage of supplies. Infrastructure failures. Starvation. Riots. Until this moment, Shepard never truly realized just how deeply connected the worlds of the galaxy were, how tightly they depended on each other. No part of Citadel Space could survive on its own – not anymore. In unity lay the strength of galactic civilization – but also its weakness.

In the meantime, Liara moved in with Shepard, into her new Citadel apartment, and carried her Shadow Broker equipment (and, of course, Glyph) over from the _Normandy_. However, throughout these sleepless nights, the only topic they talked about was the relay problem.

One of these nights, when Shepard, exhausted, came in and instantly collapsed onto the bed, Liara ran to her from the shower – in such a rush that she put her coat on the wrong side out.

"Abigail! Abigail!" she shouted nervously. "Feron found something! You have to see this!"

Shepard reluctantly rose from the bed, holding the side of her head. "Whuh?.."

"Just let me..." She pressed a button on the nearest holoprojector. "Here! Direct feed to Feron's QEC."

"Shepard!" The drell on the hologram gestured wildly as soon as the projector turned on. "Good, just in time. My scout ship found something on the edges of the Sol system... or rather, _it_ found me. They... found me. You... you better see this for yourself."

Feron vanished from the hologram – only to be replaced with...

A Reaper.

"What's this? Some old feed?"

"No, Shepard," said the hologram. "We are alive."

The voice was unfamiliar. It had a slightly echoing quality to it, like many voices of different pitch speaking in unison, but it was not the kind of chill-inducing Reaper voice Shepard was familiar with. It felt non-threatening, smooth.

"...Well, that's new."

She looked at Liara, who just shrugged, looking as puzzled as Shepard.

"So who are you, then? Sovereign's son, Vassal? Coming to swear revenge?"

"We... come to make you an offer."

"Interesting." Shepard folded her arms. "You know, for a Reaper, you're pretty lousy at this 'doom and gloom' talk. Feron, this is not a joke, is it?"

"The feed is genuine, as are the visuals," said Feron's voice over the image. "It does appear that some Reapers survived the Crucible blast. By my count, about..."

"Seven," the Reaper interrupted. "There are seven of us left. Spread over the galaxy, cut off from each other. And we ask for your help, Shepard, as we have nobody else."

"Look," said Shepard, "I don't follow. Where's the sense of smug superiority? Contempt for organics? Delusions of godhood? And you call yourselves Reapers after that?"

"We are no longer 'Reapers'," said the hologram. "The Crucible changed us, awakened us. Made us aware of what we were, of our organic past and the horror of our existence. Few had the strength to realize this and agree to live on. Most chose to self-destruct. We seven are the only ones that are left."

"So... How am I supposed to call you now?"

"Names are irrelevant. The species used to create us existed countless cycles before yours. Your languages have no name for them, nor any memories left. All we want now is to be reunited – and leave you be. And for that, we need the mass relays. We need you to repair them – for us."

"Hm. Convenient," said Shepard. "Well, it's not like I have much of a choice. Let's hear the deal."

"We cannot repair the relays on our own – not without harming organics and revealing our presence. The organics would then band against us, and we would risk complete annihilation. We will give you schematics for the relays, along with the underlying theories, in a form organics can understand. All we ask in return is to be left alone. To be given a chance to retreat and find our new purpose – in a part of the galaxy untouched by your civilization."

"Those are surprisingly good terms," said Shepard. "But how do you know I'll hold my end of the bargain?"

"We do not. But it is consistent with the pattern of your past actions."

"They're right," said Liara. "You were always willing to give everyone a second chance. And you can be trusted not to destroy someone who's the last of their kind. Even someone so reviled as the rachni..."

"You probably give me more credit than I deserve, Liara... but on this occasion, you're right. Just one question for you... uh... not-Reapers. Something that's been bugging me a lot..."

"We can afford to answer one question."

"Why all this? Why the cycle? Why did you harvest us?"

"No data available."

"What?" Shepard blinked.

"We have no information on the purpose of the cycle or our original creators. We speculate that the Oldest One, the one you know as Harbinger, may have possessed the information. However, with its destruction, it is now undoubtably lost."

Shepard shook her head. "I've seen too many weird things in my short life to say 'undoubtably'... But we'll see."

"The schematics are downloading, Abigail!" Liara exclaimed excitedly. "I'll edit this a bit and patch it through to the Council. Claim it was a Prothean archive. They don't have to know."

"Good," said Shepard. "And now that you've held your side of the bargain... I'll hold mine. But know this: one slip-up, one act of hostility against organics or their creations..."

She showed a clenched fist to the hologram.

"...and I will destroy you."

_The End._

_(...almost!)_


	5. Epilogue Part 1: The Planets and Species

And this is the story of the end of the Reaper War. The bloodiest war the modern civilizations have ever known. The war that shook the galactic society to its core, leaving unspeakable destruction and grief in its wake.

The years that followed were the hardest times the galaxy had to endure, short of the war itself. Though lasting only several weeks, the fallout was greater than from the Rachni Wars and Krogan Rebellions combined.

Decades have passed since the activation of the Crucible, and yet the effects of the Reaper invasion are still failed. While most of the old wounds have healed, many communities have never recovered, and have faded into obscurity. What follows is a brief outline of what happened between then and now, pieced together from the Citadel Archives, formerly classified Shadow Broker records, and random notes salvaged from the Encyclopedia Extranetica before they were deleted as "non-notable original research".

* * *

><p><strong>The Citadel<strong> remained as it always was: a shining beacon of relative peace and order, one of the few constants in an ever-evolving galaxy. It stayed in Earth orbit, more or less because there was no choice. It was not understood how exactly the Reapers moved it from Widow to Sol in the first place, a feat beyond the knowledge of current science, even taking the mass effect into equation. Even with the schematics for the mass relays at hand, it was estimated that the cost of building a relay capable of moving the Citadel would be utterly economically infeasible.

Thanks to the station's arms closing the moment the Reapers approached it, it was relatively undamaged, and thanks to the keepers, was soon good as new, showing no traces even of the Cerberus attack. However, the Citadel saw an increase of non-human patrol ships around it, mostly out of concern that proximity to Earth could potentially allow the humans to easily seize the station like Cerberus did.

**The homeworlds** of the Council species took the brunt of the Reaper attack, and at the time of this writing they have never quite recovered, standing as severely depopulated shadows of their former selves.

Earth and Palaven were hit the hardest, thanks not only to Reaper occupation of their major cities, but also the fallout from the immense space battles fought in their orbits. The falling debris caused severe damage to the planets' atmospheres, not to mention surface impacts and craters, bringing about climate changes and rendering whole areas uninhabitable.

Thessia and Sur'Kesh endured less orbital damage, mostly thanks to the ease with which the Reapers had crippled their relatively weak defenses, but were still badly battered and suffering from loss of population and infrastructure. Luckily, on most planets, as the Reapers mostly focused on harvesting their inhabitants rather than draining their military strength, structural damage was relatively low compared to the likely outcome of a full-scale organic war.

The years that followed were mostly devoted to slow, methodical cleanup and reconstruction efforts. And again, the organic species saw unexpected help from an unlikely ally: the geth. Having no need for food, or poison and radiation shielding, or indeed any kind of supplies other than energy and raw materials, knowing no tiredness or boredom, the synthetics were often the pioneers at the forefront of reclaiming the desolated lands, working day and night to undo the damage enough so that organics could follow.

**The Systems Alliance** was nearly exterminated when the Reapers destroyed Arcturus Station, killing the Prime Minister and the entire Alliance Parliament, and only endured thanks to its ties to Councilor Shepard and the iron will of Admiral Hackett. An emergency council formed by Hackett managed the Alliance for eight months until a new Parliament was elected, based at Cronos Station, the former Cerberus headquarters.

The Alliance further rose to prominence in the light of the weakening of the individial governments of Earth. National borders meant little in the wake of the Reaper devastation and a new wave of migration and joint programmes that it brought. Maps were being constantly redrawn – thankfully, by diplomacy rather than war – and quite a few of the smaller nations effectively ceased to exist, with their governments and most of their populations dead. The Alliance used this opportunity to assume direct control over the more devastated and depopulated regions of Earth, which, in the wake of the restoration efforts, saw an influx of human and non-human migrants alike. The more idealistic theoretics even said that those reclaimed Alliance territories were the seed of a future world state, but reality saw little need to conform to their far-fetched dreams.

A major victory for Alliance diplomacy was the Den Haag Treaty of 2194, brokered by the new Alliance civilian government with considerable pressure from Hackett and Shepard. It confirmed the precedence of Citadel and Alliance law over national law of the member states and placed limits on the military strength of individual nations compared to the Alliance. Even then, it was often covertly disregarded, with many states paying only lip service to the rulings of Citadel and Alliance courts. For now, the concept of sovereignty was too deeply ingrained in the human collective consciousness.

**Cerberus **was effectively gone by the end of the Reaper War. Finding a wealth of incriminating information at Cronos Station, the Alliance followed with arrests of remaining high-profile Cerberus activists, who could no longer rely on covert Alliance backing and blackmail to continue operation, and disarmed its paramilitary forces. The Alliance then seized remaining Cerberus assets, including monetary funds and strategic objects like mines, factories, and military bases – resources that were funneled into planetary restoration projects. While most of the organization's members were given prison sentences – often, ironically, on ex-Cerberus bases and stations – lower-ranking employees formerly on Cerberus payroll were often spared, especially scientists and engineers with valuable skills. Even they, however, were forbidden to hold political offices, mostly for fear of indoctrination. Cerberus insignia and propaganda materials were banned in Citadel Space, though in the recent years they were repurposed by neo-pro-human movements whose activists were usually too young to know better.

**Colony worlds** received a major population boost after the war. Heavy migration, decentralization and intermingling of different cultures and species became the norm rather than the exception in the post-Reaper galaxy, as people fled their homeworlds – either looking for greener pastures in the wake of destruction, hoping for a fresh start after losing everything to the Reapers, or simply hoping to drown the bad memories and feelings of loss that they endured. The migration trend was initially impeded, however, by the bad state of the relay network as repairs were triaged to more high-priority relays, for a time leaving many smaller, non-self-sufficient colonies on the verge of collapse and even starvation.

In particular, **Eden Prime** was not damaged by the war nowhere as badly as Earth, remaining a mostly untouched natural reserve. By now, its population has climbed from four to eighty million, and counting. Some analysts predict that at this rate of expansion, it may be able to surpass Earth in the future, taking the pressure off its ecosystem. The spaceport that was once attacked by Saren and the geth became a popular attraction for tourists interested in the place where Shepard, the living legend, started her quest to save the galaxy from the Reapers.

**Virmire**, once prevented from being settled by its proximity to the Terminus Systems, was soon greenlit by the Council for colonization, with the Terminus military no longer being a significant factor. A near-ideal garden world, it became one of the most ambitious Citadel colonization projects to date, second to, perhaps, only Illium, as the Council wanted to demonstrate the viability of a large mixed-species community beyond the Citadel itself. It now houses a diverse population from almost all Citadel species, though it is dominated by the humans, krogan and salarians, in that order. The nuclear crater that remained of Saren's facility was filled and decontaminated by the geth – as no organics wanted anything to do with the place – and now houses one of the major geth installations outside the Perseus Veil, with a memorial to Kaidan Alenko and the STG operatives who had sacrificed themselves to destroy Saren's base.

**The geth** were grudgingly accepted into galactic society – both as a "necessary evil" to aid with post-war recovery, and thanks to Councilor Shepard's leverage. They were even given an embassy on the Citadel and allowed to settle on organic worlds as long as their populations and military strength were kept within strict limits. Their integration, however, proved difficult and rocky. Most organics are still prejudiced against synthetics, not helped by the geth's fundamentally different values and view of the world. While the geth do have a culture and a form of literature, it is based on synthetic values – such as acquisition of knowledge, self-improvement, and achieving consensus – and not designed to provoke an emotional response; and while the geth understand why and how organics are affected by emotions, and can intentionally evoke them in organics, they themselves possess no emotions nor, typically, any desire to learn to think like organics.

Citadel law retained its ban on creating new synthetics, but an exception was made for existing ones created before the Reaper War – the geth, EDI, and uncovered private AI experiments by Cerberus and other undercover groups. To these days, political lobbyists still campaign for unrestricted AI research. Ironically, they themselves are all organics.

In the recent years, the geth collective was split with a philosophical identity crisis, caused by decades of constant interaction with organics. The geth were forced to rethink the boundaries of individual personalities which were previously considered inconsequential. Two major factions emerged, still struggling to unite their viewpoints. The Symbiosis faction calls for continuing construction of the unfinished geth superstructure, halted by the Reaper attack, believing that uniting all geth minds within it would be the next step in their evolution. By contrast, the Boundary faction believes that the best evolutionary path lies in allowing individual geth platforms to exist autonomously and self-determinate, citing the defunct Legion as a successful example of that approach.

**The quarians **finally settled down on Rannoch, after three hundred years of wandering the galaxy, and were given their Citadel embassy back. As the planet had not previously housed an organic civilization, the Reapers had left it alone, which was more than other species could say for their homeworlds. Thanks to help from the geth, the planet was settled in record time, as makeshift shelters soon gave way for permanent cities – built partially with materials salvaged from disassembled Migrant Fleet ships. The geth also helped the quarians adapt to living outside their suits faster; while they still had to wear them whenever they left the planet, videos of whole streets full of unmasked quarians took the galaxy by surprise, with many thinking it was a hoax at first.

The transition was nothing but easy, though. The sudden, unforeseen turn of events turned the entire quarian culture and values upside down – having to adapt to a life where the suits, pilgrimages, and scarcity of resources on the ships were no longer factors, and they suddenly shared their homeworld with their former greatest enemies. The older generation especially adapted to the change badly, with many elderly and middle-aged quarians preferring to stay on ships or continuing to wear their suits on Rannoch out of habit, even expecting their children to leave their birth neighborhoods and go on pilgrimages long after it ceased being necessary and legally required. This conflict of values is unlikely to be resolved in the lifetime of a single generation.

So far, the quarians have no plans to colonize other planets. Their immune systems would have to adjust to Rannoch first before they would even consider moving significant populations to planets less suited for their biology.

**The krogan**, much like the quarians, left the Reaper War with a feeling of renewed hope rather than despair. They had nothing to lose to the Reapers – their homeworld was already ruined – and everything to gain. The Council feared that Urdnot Wrex, whose rule over the united krogan clans was now undisputed, would demand further concessions at gunpoint – perhaps a Council seat or unrealistic reparations – or even wage war on the rest of the galaxy right away. However, such fears proved unfounded.

Wrex and Bakara surprised almost everyone – except maybe Shepard and her former crew – by passing law that served to contain the aggressive and expansionist traditions of the krogan, starting with gun control and the maximum of two children per family. From the Council, they asked only for specialists who could help restore Tuchanka's ecosystem, and three former krogan colonies ceded, but never settled by other species after the Krogan Rebellions. Dissenters were quickly silenced – with force, which, as Wrex regretfully noted, was the only language krogan understood, for the time being.

The ruling couple parted ways shortly after. Bakara stayed on Tuchanka with the majority of the krogan population and her son, Urdnot Mordin. She vowed to see the damage of the nuclear war undone in her lifetime, and to this end, invited a salarian-turian taskforce, led by Dr. Padok Wiks, to preserve and expand the green zone still surviving at the base of the Shroud tower.

Meanwhile, half of Clan Urdnot and some of the less influental clans followed Wrex to Gellix, which became a rallying point for those krogan who wanted a planet more comfortable than a nuclear wasteland. There, Wrex is trying to build a new krogan society based on values more noble than endless war. Breaking millennia-old stigmas is proving challenging to say the least, and the older and more conservative krogan resent this "benevolent dictatorship", missing the good old ways. Nevertheless, the world is already seeing its first renowned krogan artists and scientists – through Wrex recognizes that a relapse, or even a repeat of the Rebellions, is likely if the krogan are not constantly monitored and kept in check by rulers to come.

And when all was said and done, the galaxy did not forget the species that gave them even a chance of stopping the Reapers at all: **the Protheans**. When it became public knowledge that the asari had been hiding and secretly reverse-engineering Prothean technology, it understandably caused an uproar from the other species. Councilor Tevos was almost forced by Valern and Sparatus to step down, but Councilor Shepard vouched for the asari, believing that they had suffered enough – on the condition that they would surrender the beacon to the Citadel and publish their classified Prothean research. The beacon still stands in the Citadel Tower, just in front of the Council chamber, and Dr. T'Soni's research of it brought out piles of new discoveries about the extinct Prothean culture.

Even after the revelation that the Protheans were not the original creators of the Citadel and the mass relays, the galaxy remained infatuated with this enigmatic species, with many voicing the desire to see them brought back to life. It was decided that attempts to clone Protheans based on Collector tissue would be unviable, thanks to the Collectors' extensive genetic modifications and lack of diversity. However, recently, an archaeological team on Ilos (suspected to be funded by the Shadow Broker) unearthed a time capsule containing many samples of previously unknown plant and animal species, including 4,000 unique Prothean DNA samples.

It is speculated that the capsule was a contingency plan for repopulation that failed because the surviving scientists of Ilos had no intact infrastructure left to make clones from these samples. Theoretically their number is enough to restart a Prothean population, but debates continue on the morality of such action, as the restored specimen would have no knowledge of their past and would not truly be Protheans in a cultural sense. For now, the DNA samples remain untouched.

* * *

><p>This is where modern history finds the galactic society at large. This is the big picture, by necessity glossing over many smaller details, not giving enough credit to the individuals. So let us, last but not least, look at the personal lives of Shepard and her companions, and see where they ended up after the war...<p> 


	6. Epilogue Part 2: The People

_A reader asked why I didn't mention Javik in the previous chapter. The reason is simple: after the CF that was the original ME3 ending, I swore off paying EA any more money, didn't buy any DLCs, and didn't play them in my "canonical" playthrough._

_As far as I'm concerned, in this story, Javik either doesn't exist or still lies undisturbed in his stasis pod on Eden Prime._

* * *

><p>If Councilor <strong>Abigail Shepard<strong>'s career could be described by a single word, it would be "divisive". Despite her reputation as a hero of the galaxy, opinions of her as a politician once again proved the old adage: "you cannot please everyone".

Wielding more power, direct and indirect, than any human before her ever had, the power to make decisions affecting the lives of billions, she made it clear early on that she would not give her own species any preferential treatment. Her term on the Council passed under the overarching theme of reconstruction: rebuilding priority relays, moving resources and specialists from world to world to maintain critical factories and supply routes, cleaning up ruins and other traces of Reaper occupation, providing shelters and relief for refugees... in other words, doing whatever it took to keep the galaxy at least minimally functioning and preventing a total collapse, without regard for species or national borders.

Any remaining illusions that Shepard would be pro-human at the expense of other species were shattered when she publicly married Liara T'Soni, as interspecies marriage was previously considered unthinkable for a human politician of such caliber. She spent most of her career under fire from two fronts at once: human rights groups accused her of "selling out to the aliens" for not pooling all available resources to the still-ravaged Earth, while activists among non-Council species were opposed to human presence on the Council in the first place, the batarians most strongly of all, calling the presence of "the butcher of Bahak" on the Council a slap in the face of the dead colonists.

Nevertheless, from a modern point of view, Councilor Shepard can be said to have been vindicated by history. Having ascended to power in a ruined galaxy, on the verge of anarchy and civil war, she preferred to lead through charisma and personal connections rather than formal rules and protocol, using her contacts in the governments of five species and even the ruler of Omega (not to mention her wife, the Shadow Broker) to their fullest – and personally intervened to resolve one diplomatic crisis after another. Modern historians generally agree that her efforts saved the galaxy once again – and though it still had a long way to go before its economy would rise back to pre-war levels, she left her successors with a significantly easier job.

Shepard's personal life mostly evaded the public consciousness. She resented celebrity gossip and never gave interviews, citing bad experiences with journalists in the past. The information void, however, did nothing to repel wild rumors and conspiracy theories, often silly and outrageous, like an accusation that the asari replaced the real Shepard with a remote-controlled robot. Meanwhile, in private, she enjoyed spending time with her former squadmates, often visiting them on vacations. She also started the tradition of yearly gatherings of "Team Shepard", as it came to be called, on anniversaries of the Crucible's firing. To this day, the surviving former crew members of both _Normandy_ ships gather at Shepard and Liara's apartment every year, remembering their adventures together.

Though reaffirmed by the Council for a second term, Shepard resigned after ten years, by which point Tevos was the only remaining member of the Council that had survived Sovereign's attack – and she, too, was on her way out. "The galaxy is tired of me, and I'm tired of this job," Shepard said in her resignation speech, while thanking the species of the galaxy for banding together and helping each other survive these difficult times. She was then reinstated as a Spectre, more as a symbolic empowering gesture than a call to return to active duty, turning down the offer to return to the Alliance Navy. Then she was immediately rehired by the new human councilor as the Special Diplomatic Advisor, a post created specifically for her – or, as she jokingly referred to it, "the Council's official conscience". All future human councilors in her lifetime not only respected the tradition of not serving more than ten years, but also kept Shepard in her post, where her word still had considerable weight.

Today, ex-Councilor Shepard is still alive, though in the later stages of her life. She spends her time training a new generation of Alliance soldiers, cruising the galaxy on diplomatic tours, and occasionally going on new adventures "for old times' sake", having subdued painful memories of the Reaper War at long last. She is said to consider her life well-lived, knowing that others will continue her work where she left off.

**Liara T'Soni** stayed the Shadow Broker for the transitional period, helping Shepard and the reconstruction efforts with her contacts' funds and facilities – those that survived the war, that is. Her extensive surveillance let the Council know, through Shepard, whenever there was major trouble brewing for the galaxy at large, and Spectres were dispatched on time to avert the potential disasters. When Councilor Tevos stepped down, shortly after Shepard, she offered Liara to succeed her, knowing full well who she secretly was; however, Liara refused, saying that she never desired leadership and fame, and felt more confident and useful staying in the shadows.

As time passed, she grew more and more uncomfortable with the amount of harsh, ruthless actions she had to commit under the Broker persona, even if it was in the name of the greater good – actions that weighed on her conscience and conflicted with the ethics she followed as herself, as Liara. Finally, when she decided it was time, she quietly stepped down as the Broker and destroyed most of the organization's surveillance and communication network to ensure nobody could replace her. "The time I spent as the Broker is but a moment by asari standards," she said to Shepard, "but if I waited any longer, I'd risk becoming the mask." She did rehire some of the Broker's more scrupulous agents, only as herself, openly; none of them, except for Feron, realized they were still working for the same boss.

These days, Liara continues Prothean research (and has managed to decode many of the more puzzling Prothean artifacts, such as the beacon from Thessia, through Shepard's knowledge of the Cipher), being especially interested in Prothean involvement in the beginnings of early asari civilization. She also sees her newfound purpose in life in setting up contingencies for possible existential risks to the galaxy. She is seeding time capsules, creating secret bunkers with cryogenic equipment, and engineering other ways to pass information to future civilizations that may inherit the galaxy. Though hoping for the best, she prefers to be prepared for the worst.

The sights she saw on Lesuss and Thessia during the Reaper War also left Liara somewhat jaded about her own people and willing to take a stance in internal asari affairs. It was mostly thanks to her influence that the diplomatic outcry over the Thessian beacon was smoothed over. She also lobbied for better treatment of ardat-yakshi, fighting millennia of prejudice and oppression. To this end, she managed to lobby for improved, more ethical management in monasteries, while making them mandatory only for the worst sufferers of the condition who were deemed without hope of integrating into the mainstream asari society. Eventually, she hopes to see a gene therapy developed within her lifetime.

While Shepard's life has passed its zenith, Liara's is only just beginning, and it's hard to say what the future holds for the young asari. "Seize the moment," Shepard advised to her wife, "live your life to the fullest, and don't feel bound to me when I'm gone."

* * *

><p>Lieutenant-Commander <strong>Ashley Williams<strong> took the reins of the _Normandy_ SR-2 after Shepard's departure. As a Spectre, she kept close ties with Admiral Hackett and dedicated her service to protecting human colonies, especially Eden Prime and her homeworld, Sirona.

Though both remaining non-humans on the _Normandy_ left at the same time as Shepard, Ashley continued Shepard's tradition of working closely with other species, having outgrown her earlier distrust of them, and took effort to mercilessly rein in her more xenophobic subordinates. She never forgot Kaidan Alenko's sacrifice, often visiting his memorial on Virmire, though she eventually got over her survivor's death.

The SR-2 was eventually removed from service and turned into a museum ship. Stripped of its engines and eezo core, the legendary Alliance frigate stands to this day in London, near Admiral Anderson's grave and monument. Ashley, meanwhile, continued to command the new top-of-the-line _Normandy_ SR-3 for many years, getting promoted to full Commander and finally Captain, and bonding with her XO, James Vega. Today, she is credited with single-handedly breaking the "Williams curse", her exemplary service record far eclipsing the shame of her grandfather's fiasco at Shanxi – and even inspiring modern historians to re-examine the details of General Williams' uneasy decision to surrender to the turians, portraying it as a selfless action that saved civilian lives.

Lieutenant **James Vega** stayed on the _Normandy_ under Ashley, like most of its human crew. When the Alliance restarted the ICT program – this time, headquartered in the seized Cerberus facility on Horizon rather than on Earth – he took a series of extended leaves, climbing through the ranks from N1 to, eventually, his much-desired N7.

He remained a big fan of Shepard through and through, often impressing the green recruits with tales of him helping Shepard save the galaxy. After he returned to the new _Normandy_ SR-3 with an N7 designation at the rank of Commander, his romance with Ashley also blossomed, eventually followed with marriage = and though it was technically fraternization, Ashley got away with it as a Spectre, much like Shepard before her.

James repeatedly refused the offer of being assigned a ship of his own, feeling more comfortable as an XO to Ashley than a CO, and, believing that the galaxy still has many adventures prepared for him, resolved not to retire before she does – and possibly not even then.

Jeff Moreau, better known as **Joker**, was considered practically irreplaceable on the SR-2. When word spread throughout the Alliance Navy of his accomplishments under Shepard's command, he received lots of transfer offers, but declined them all. Years later, when Ashley moved to the new SR-3, he chose not to follow her: as **EDI** could not be removed from the old _Normandy_, being one and the same with the ship's systems, so did Joker decide to stay with his synthetic companion.

Now he works as the curator of the museum ship, as well as the larger Museum of the Reaper War built nearby, and in his spare time, travels around Earth with EDI's many avatar bodies, helping the AI better understand humans, their homeworld, and their culture. Sometimes, EDI makes unexpected witty remarks to tourists visiting the ship through its supposedly disabled PA system, much to Joker's amusement.

**Garrus Vakarian** left the _Normandy_ immediately after Shepard stepped down, seeing no point in staying on a human ship with his best friend gone. He then returned to Palaven, where he leapt into the fray of mopping up the ground Reaper forces still occupying the planet. Soon he proved himself an exceptional commander, and his skill of surviving impossible odds with minimal supplies and carrying out seemingly hopeless search-and-rescue operations without compromising his "no one left behind" policy, determined not to lose any more squadmates after the disaster on Omega.

When news of these exploits reached Primarch Victus, he recommended Garrus to the Council as a Spectre candidate, and got unanimous approval. (Shepard, naturally, was the first to vouch for him.) Soon after getting Spectre status, he reassumed the Archangel persona with a new, mostly-turian squad, becoming the bane of criminals who sought to escape Citadel justice in the Terminus Systems.

So far, his career is working out better than his first foray into Omega's gritty life, mostly thanks to Shepard's influence rubbing on him – and a better understanding of subtlety, patience, and "divide and conquer" tactics. Even now, aged, Garrus has no plans to retire, thinking himself unfit for a quiet civilian life, and jokes that the only suitable retirement will be his grave.

**Tali'Zorah vas Rannoch** stayed on the _Normandy_ under Ashley for a year, feeling not yet ready to commit to life outside a ship. She left when news reached her that the Admiralty Board was disbanded, transmitting government authority to the civilian Conclave and thus signifying the end of three centuries of martial law in quarian society. She was then offered to lead the newly reopened quarian embassy on the Citadel, and although it meant missing the chance to settle down on Rannoch for a while, she accepted.

As the quarian ambassador, Tali was concerned with ensuring that her people were treated as first-class citizens on the Citadel, speaking and passing legislation to combat the stigma they still faced despite their major contribution to the Reaper War, as well as making contact with the quarian exiles who had chosen or been forced to live outside the Migrant Fleet. Together with Councilor Shepard, she also successfully lobbied for the geth to be granted Citadel citizenship as well – though it was a widely criticized and opposed move that, like everything involving synthetic rights, is hotly contested to this day.

Occasionally Tali, along with Shepard, was called to the Perseus Veil to defuse small local conflicts between quarian and geth settlers – called by both sides. After years of hard work as the quarian ambassador, Tali resigned and returned to Rannoch, together with the first geth ambassador Paradigm – an experimental quasi-biotic Legion-class platform whom she nicknamed "Not-Legion" for its detached, impartial view of organics, though beginning to slowly warm up to them under her influence.

On Rannoch, Tali built her new house on the riverside spot she wanted, where Shepard and the Migrant Fleet had once defeated the Reaper Destroyer and Legion had sacrificed itself. Even now, she tends to a small, makeshift grave of her fallen geth friend, distraught that nobody outside the former Team Shepard, not even other geth, seems to miss Legion and regret its loss.

**Urdnot Wrex** briefly returned to Tuchanka, but did not stay there for long. As he successfully persuaded the Council to give the krogan back their colony worlds, so did they begin to spread across the galaxy in ever-increasing numbers. Knowing that there were only two krogan he could trust to lead without screwing up (himself and Bakara), Wrex left his bondmate to restore the ruined homeworld, aided by Padok Wiks and the STG, himself migrating to the relatively hospitable colony world of Gellix.

Clan Urdnot's center of operations now lies in the same ex-Cerberus facility from which Shepard and Jacob Taylor once evacuated the defecting scientists. From there, Wrex micromanages the krogan colonies, putting special emphasis on education and introducing his people to the Citadel cultural values that they had neglected for so long. He does not hesitate to get his hands dirty and use violence to keep revanchists and supporters of the old ways in line, though he regrets it and hopes to see the day when krogan disputes can be solved by ways other than violence. His biggest worry is dying before his work is complete, before he and Bakara can raise a new, more civilized generation, or losing power to someone like his late brother Wreav, who would only repeat the sad history of self-destruction and mistakes of the Krogan Rebellions.

After the Battle of London,** Urdnot Grunt** was promoted by Wrex to the commander of the krogan offworld armed forces, sent to explore uncharted worlds and pave the way for krogan colonization. Thanks to his fame, few krogan soldiers questioned the decision to put a tank-bred youth above them, and soon serving under Grunt became an honor, inspiring quite a few Terminus mercenaries and outcasts to return to their people and pledge themselves to Clan Urdnot. The Aralakh Company, once wiped out by the rachni on Utukku, was re-established as Grunt's personal elite guard and became one of the symbols of the emerging Krogan Renaissance, along with the rebuilt City of the Ancients and, of course, Wrex's family.

Wrex has mixed feelings on Grunt. While he considers the young commander useful as a symbol of hope, his military simple-mindedness is something Wrex is trying to restrain in his species, admitting that part of the reason he sends Grunt on offworld missions is so that he would always have something to shoot at and avoid causing trouble where it matters.

With her father dead and Cerberus dissolved, **Miranda Lawson** could, at long last, stop hiding. Finally at peace with herself and her complicated past, she accepted Admiral Hackett's offer to join the Alliance Engineering Corps, she found her passion in infrastructure planning, spearheading the reconstruction efforts and charting designs and blueprints for new Alliance-funded settlements on and beyond Earth.

Even in later years, Miranda's intelligence and scientific talent remained in high demand. She published formerly classified Cerberus research and implant technology from the Lazarus Project, leading to breakthroughs in medical care (though also sparking philosophical debates on the morality of resurrection). Though she mostly stayed in the new Alliance headquarters on Cronos Station, where she personally ensured that nothing would remind her of Cerberus, she often visited her sister Oriana, who founded a refugee support center on Horizon – an honest one this time. Miranda also worked part-time as Shepard's personal doctor, tending to her implants for the rest of her life as a gesture of goodwill.

**Jack**, now legally known as Jacqueline Nought, was left conflicted after the end of the war. Of course, she returned to Grissom Academy with the students and Kahlee Sanders; as Cerberus left the station structurally intact, they could resume training almost immediately. Jack developed a special, though strictly non-romantic, fondness for David Archer, even after his graduation, seeing him as a kindred spirit: an emotionally messed up victim of dehumanizing Cerberus experiments.

Though there were frequent protests against "a mass murderer teaching our children", the Alliance always denied all requests to keep her arrested for her past crimes – on the technicality that they were committed in the Terminus Systems, outside Citadel jurisdiction. Her worst enemy was her conscience, as she never forgave herself for her past, even when the system did.

Through the Shadow Broker files, Liara eventually traced the whereabouts of Jack's parents, who had once lost her to Cerberus as an infant. They were still living on Eden Prime, having survived the brief Reaper occupation. The reunion was bittersweet; though the couple was overjoyed to meet the daughter they thought dead, the description of her life as a Cerberus test subject left them horrified, and Jack omitted her criminal past entirely, skipping straight to her recruitment by Shepard and the fight against the Collectors. Still, being accepted by her parents gave Jack a little bit of self-confidence and the will to live on as a stable, sincerely reformed person.

**Samara** emerged from the ruins of Thessia as the last known living justicar, as there were only a handful of them and the rest gave their lives defending the asari homeworld from the Reapers. Having little else left to live for with the justicar order effectively gone, she settled down in the deserted monastery on Lesuss with Falere, helping her daughter with obtaining food and other basic supplies.

For a few more years, the mother and daughter lived together, undisturbed, while the rest of the galaxy seemingly forgot about them. It was not a life completely without regrets; Samara saw herself as a living relic of "simpler times when morality was more black and white". Falere, meanwhile, grew tired of the monastery, wishing to be with her people, make a difference and contribute to recovery from the war, but the Code prevented her from leaving.

One day, the two were were unexpectedly visited by none other than Liara, bringing a permit allowing Falere, personally, to be released from the monastery for exemplary behavior, signed by Councilors Tevos and Shepard. For a long time after that, Samara was reluctant to let Falere go, fighting herself, as it would be against the Code despite civil law permitting it. But as always, she found a loophole: respecting Shepard's wish counted as fulfilling her Oath of Subsumation, which came before everything else in the Code. They moved to Thessia, enjoying their time there until Samara peacefully passed away from old age in Falere's arms; and with her death, the justicar tradition came to a definite end.

**Kasumi Goto** vanished without a trace after the Battle of London, leaving only a single note inside the Crucible that read, "So long, and thanks for all the drinks." Even Shadow Broker agents dug up only minimal intelligence on her – not that Liara pried.

She did resurface on two notable occasions. Once before the widow of the late businessman Donovan Hock, who lived in poverty after Hock's illegal funds were seized, to present a monetary donation from one Allison Gunn. The other time, she suddenly appeared in the Alliance Prime Minister's office on Cronos Station to present an expansive list of locations of priceless museum pieces believed to be lost or stolen. (Sixteen security officers were later disciplined with salary subtractions for failing to stop her on the way in or out.) Kasumi also attended Shepard's yearly celebration parties – always entering covertly and spooking the other guests by suddenly revealing herself in the middle of embarrassing conversations.

**Zaeed Massani** abandoned his mercenary career after the Reaper War. The money he got from his connections alone, plus raiding remaining Cerberus installations, was enough for him, and with Cerberus gone and the Terminus black markets in deep recession, there were few job opportunities to begin with. On his last self-appointed mission, he caught up with Vido Santiago – this time, without putting lives in danger, cursing Shepard making him "go soft". Then he suddenly appeared on Omega, dropped the disgraced ex-founder of the Blue Suns at Aria's feet, then silently left without requesting payment.

Feeling the end of his life approaching, Zaeed bought a luxury estate on Elysium – now safe from batarian threats. Shepard visited him when she received word that Zaeed was dying, and they spent his last hours fondly remembering the best moments of the Collector campaign. He passed away smiling, with the words, "Goodbye, Shepard, it's been a hell of a time," and was buried in accordance to his will: with his rifle, Jessie, at his side.

**Conrad Verner**, disappointed that he never got to see "real action" like Shepard did, made a pitch for a new science fiction series: _Captain V, Defender of the Citadel_, where he got the leading role of the swashbuckling action hero. Though critics found it cheesy and mercilessly nitpicked all scientific inaccuracies in it (the plot of the latest season finale came under fire for hinging on the assumption that synthetics had DNA), the series was an instant hit, rivaling even _Blasto_ in popularity, and Conrad became a galaxy-famous actor overnight. Shepard is reported to be happy with the outcome, which let Conrad finally feel like a hero without putting his own or anyone else's lives in danger.

* * *

><p>This is where we have to part ways.<p>

The story ends here – this particular story, that is. It could have just ended with "and they all lived happily ever after"... but that would be a lie, for in real life, there is never any "happily ever after". There are and always will be new problems, new stories, new calls for adventure that are beyond the scope of these dry, terse paragraphs. Perhaps some other authors will write about them someday. Hopefully, new challenges will never pose such a threat to the entire galaxy as the Reapers did, but if they do – let us hope the galaxy will be better prepared.

The story of Commander Shepard and the Reapers may be over – but history itself never ends.

_2246_


End file.
